Culture Institute Bars Ramírez

MANAGUA – The state-run Nicaraguan Institute of Culture, or INC, has barred novelist and former Vice President Sergio Ramírez from writing the prologue to an anthology of Nicaraguan poetry due to be published next spring by Madrid’s El País newspaper.

Ramírez, who served in the first Sandinista government in the 1980s and has since become a leading critic, has denounced the INC decision as “an official act of censorship by the government.”

INC said it has the right to decide who should write the prologue to the poetry volume because the intellectual property rights of Nicaraguan poet Carlos Martinez Rivas (1924-1998) were awarded to the government institute by the poet’s family.

El País had asked for INC’s authorization to publish Ramirez’s introduction, but the response was negative. El País announced it will not publish the book as a result.